Friday, December 13, 2013

Megan is Missing (2011)

Megan is Missing is a movie about two best friends who end
up missing after being targeted by an online predator. Megan is a 14 year old
popular girl at her school, though she’s popular for all the wrong reasons. She’s
sexually active, partying, yet still seems to maintain excellent grades at her
High School. Megan has an oddball best
friend named Amy, 13. Amy is reserved
and not well liked by Megan’s partying crowd.
The two form a very tight relationship though, Megan needs a true friend
who doesn’t use her and Amy is drawn to Megan’s outgoing personality and ability
to navigate life on the popular side.

The whole movie is made up of found footage and videos of
the girls talking to each other via skype, I have to say that I was caught off
guard with all the frank talk of sex between the teens like it was no big
deal. I think that’s because I’m 35 and
their 13/14….I was thinking to myself please tell me kids these days don’t
rattle off talk like this at 13/14 and please dear lord never let my daughter
do these types of things! I bet a lot of teens are like this though, so while
it shocked me I bet it’s not too far from the truth (yes I do realize not all kids are like this). You are also presented with reasons throughout
the film that give you a little look into why Megan is so “free” with herself –
disturbing too.

Megan is played by Rachel Quinn, I feel her acting throughout
the film came off as very believable. Like
I said there’s a lot of each of the girls talking directly into cameras while
they’re skyping and I felt she was very natural and bubbly like a real teenager
would be. Amy on the other hand was far
less believable, I didn’t get much emotion from her and couldn’t quite connect
or feel for her.

Light Spoilers

There’s a couple of scenes in this movie that go on for far
too long, one of them is when Megan brings her friend Amy to a party. First of all Megan has to trade favors just
to get Amy in, again please dear lord never let my daughter do these types of
things. The party scene must go on for
15 minutes, it’s all random music and teens acting up. The supporting characters in this movie do
not give great performances (painful and very bad), I almost LOL a few times. This particular scene just gets old, it’s not that it came
off really fake as far as the set-up, but sometimes I think scenes go on for
far too long. I don’t always need a point
hammered to me for 15 minutes to achieve the goal.

SPOILERS

Megan eventually begins chatting with an unknown kid named
Josh via skype at home on her PC. Josh
has a broken camera, so Megan can’t see him during their conversations. I can totally see an unsuspecting girl not
getting up in arms over this, look at the show Catfish. People go months without seeing who they're talking to on the other end. For a
teenager, and in this movie, I don’t see this as a flaw or something Megan
should have been worried about.

Eventually Megan goes missing, hence the title. Amy is distraught from the second she notices
Megan’s gone. The next shots are
straight from the HLN Network, can you say Nancy Grace? Nancy Grace's news show isn’t my
favorite, but I do see it ALL THE TIME.
Plaster pictures of the beautiful missing teens on the TV, talk about how
loved she was, how popular she was, make “important” reenactments of the crime
for the TV audience etc. I even had a
little laugh as after they spend 15 minutes talking up Megan and urging the
public to find her, the newscaster then spends 2 seconds also letting her
viewing audience know there's a missing teen in Crenshaw. Let’s just say that Crenshaw
teen didn’t get as much pub as our California Queen.

To be honest this was a great part of the movie. Seeing these types of newscasts in a movie,
made me realize how effed up some of these shows are. Sure we get the word out about a missing
person, that’s good, but the shows are so pumped up on adrenaline and ratings
that it’s also a little bit sickening.

Eventually Megan reaches out to the last person who had
contact with Megan, and that’s when “Josh” lets his true colors show. Soon both teens are missing and we get to
find out what happened, it’s not nice of course.

Now up to this point I don’t really like the movie that
much, Execution and timing is bad so when you finally reach the climax, and get
to see what happened to these girls, it was fairly brief. You get your run of the mill girl in a cage
chained up scenario and a rape scene (made very uncomfortable not just because
it’s rape (that’s bad enough) but the thought of her only being 14 makes it all
the more torturous.

But more torturous then that rape scene is the two hundred
gabillion million minute scene of “Josh” getting rid of Amy. I swear to you, you get to watch a guy shovel
for approximately 20 minutes. This went
on for far too long. This is another
case of “dude, I get it”. If you hang on
though, you are rewarded with a chilling scene and thought. As Josh is burying
Amy she’s still alive, as he covers her with dirt you get to hear her pleading
for her life but her voice fading underneath the dirt - So disturbing and
heartbreaking.

I also have to get this out, if you’re going to use found
footage for scenes there absolutely must be a reason for this footage to have
been recorded in the first place. The
end of Megan is missing is sorely guilty of giving us no reason for the last 22
minutes of footage to exist.

End Spoilers

Overall the story is great.
I think with better execution, better pacing, and a few acting classes
this could have been better. Josh definitely
could have been given a larger role too, a peak into his world, just a peak now! I don’t need hardcore motivation, shoot he’s
a predator and that’s that. It just
would have been nice to understand his methods and want for teens personally.

I can really only recommend this to horror movie lovers who like to try everything out, despite the great
idea it’s pretty painful to watch. I
will however keep this director/writers name in my mind, he’s got a chance to
do better as far as directing and writing an entire movie.

- Michael Goi has quite a few cinematography award nominations and one win, looks like he's also worked on AHS. Here's his IMDB Page.

There are MAJOR SPOILERS on this site. I'm talking about the whole movie and it's plot, so they're not safe to read if you haven't seen the movie yet. I don't want to ruin a movie you would like to see - so be careful.

If you just want to search for a movie by the score it got, click on the "Rated Movie by Score" page. Here you can see the rating versus a whole breakdown.

These are also my personal opinions - I'm no writer, director, or professional reviewer - I just LOVE horror movies, that's it.